Thursday, March 1, 2007

The titles that Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) attaches to its operations reveal a great deal about the logic behind current U.S. immigration policy. Among the most suggestively titled is the ongoing Operation "Return to Sender," one of the largest such operations in U.S. history. The program, supposedly designed to target "fugitive aliens," has resulted in the indiscriminate round up of over 13,000 undocumented migrants in cities throughout the United States. The cynical name given to this even more cynical operation implies a sender, a receiver -- and an object. The object, or rather objects, are migrant workers and their families.

Operation Return to Sender is an instrumentalist policy that ignores the humanity of migrant workers. It refuses to recognize that migrants have hopes and dreams, that they have a legitimate need to eat and think and act. It denies family ties and affective relationships. It also ignores the central role that undocumented workers play in the U.S. economy and the factors that brought them to the country in the first place. In short, Operation Return to Sender acts on the premise that the millions of undocumented workers in the United States today are little more than globalization's junk mail.

About Us

No One is Illegal-Vancouver is a grassroots anti-colonial immigrant/refugee rights community collective with leadership from members of migrant and/or racialized backgrounds.
As a movement for self-determination that challenges the ideology of immigration controls, we are in full confrontation with Canadian border policies; denouncing and taking action to combat racial profiling, detention and deportation, the national security apparatus, law enforcement brutality, and exploitative working conditions of migrants. We stand in solidarity with indigenous struggles against colonization across Turtle Island and also place ourselves within the broader movement for global justice struggling against capitalism, homophobia, occupation, patriarchy, poverty, war, and other systems of oppression and exploitation.

No One Is Illegal - Vancouver

Our educational work involves furthering an anti-imperialist, anti-war, and anticapitalist analysis that links the "War on Terror" abroad to the racist "Fortress North America" at home. We struggle for the right for our communities to maintain their livelihoods and resist war, occupation, and displacement, while building alliances and supporting indigenous sisters and brothers fighting theft of land and displacement. Our work is carried out through various strategies including public awareness events, direct support work with refugees and undocumented migrants, multilingual community political/legal forums, fighting back through rallies and direct actions, and ongoing campaigns and projects.